薔薇の末裔

I bet it's going to be the same kind of revival as noisy crowds (only one original member)

Worst jacket design ever but I like how his hairstyle and looks is reminiscent of his days in Matina

Promotional flyer for glamscure, nue and Roqudama Carta's 3man live featuring the three vocalists. Comment movie

I believe they just made it unavailable as they won't be able to ship the tickets on time? preorders usually close about two days in advance and there is no sold out announcement from neither band and live house.

Looks like they will release an album this Spring. I wonder if that will be their first release in regular stores and if they will include the songs from these singles too?

Their twitter says he is joining AS A SUPPORT GUITARIST, so he is not a member of the band. I am sure they purposely phrased it in that misleading way to make it sound more sensational though. They took new pictures like two weeks ago and wouldn't make sense if they were planning to add a new member right after that I wouldn't be surprised if he joined eventually though. It looks like they are slowly growing bigger and it might be a chance for him to get a decent fanbase after Cell failed.

To me the latter part of the 90's is probably visual kei at its peak and full bloom. It is definitely the time it got the most popular and having so much money flowing actually helped some bands (like Malice Mizer) express themselves 100%. The first half of 2000's also was impressive to me, as it took inspiration from the big bands of the 90's and experimented a bit more/tried out new things. Indie bands also started looking more polished and professional and therefore got some more exposure as well. From around 2007/8 onwards there's been nothing really new (except Golden Bomber) and the scene has been slowly rotting so... ps: I would say Luna Sea beong to the second way, as they started becoming popular around those years together with Kuroyume and L'Arc. ALso Malice Mizer and Lareine should be in the third way as they became relevant around 97-98.

I understand that the situation might look a bit deformed from overseas and by looking at the internet medias, but visual kei has been dead for years in Japan already. Now that many fans from overseas could visit Japan I thought it is common knowledge, but it is a fact that filling livehouses is becoming more and more painful especially for indie bands. Of course there are established bands with some following and some exceptions, but most indie events have like what? 40 or 50 people in the crowd when they are lucky (and we are talking about events with like 6 to 10 bands performing). It's ridiculous that now bands who have a regular attendance of 15/20 people on events are considered fairly popular. Still it is cool how most bands can hide that by paying from their pockets and tave expensive photoshoots/music videos and release tons of material, but the truth is a bit different. People who have been in bigger bands before now do small live houses, and bands who are spending a lot of money on advertisement and media promotion are probably not even getting their money back. I was disappointed when Kamijo held his birthday live last summer, as he rented two venues, had a jazz orchestra and a choir play, invited a bunch of fairly popular musicians and band (including TV comedians), and even revived both Lareine and Versailles for one night, but the tickets were really far from selling out. An event of this scale would probably be full house 10 years ago. The Black Swan got featured on major TV shows because their drummer is raising a stray cat, and they are still getting little following. Of course there will always be some sort of fanbase, but we are really far from that time when WHATEVER band, regardless of how bad or cheap looking they were they, could get a decent following with 0 promotion. Common sense norma (number of tickets a band has to sell at a multi-band event) in 2017 is 10 tickets or less, while it used to be 20-30 few years ago, and most gigs I have been seeing recently hardly had 5 people in the front row for each band. It feels like probably the visual kei core fanbase pretty much got a family/grew up/moved to something else and consequently the independent scene is slowly dying every year. Of course bands with bigger promotion and a decent management desk will still manage to keep going somehow. And there is like huge following of male fans who buy the CDs but do not go the gigs. But their contribution to the scene is probably too small as most money comes from concerts and merchandise. Japanese people already know visual kei, it has 0 shock value and conceptually connected to stuff that is like 30 years old like X Japan and so on. That makes it hard to get a younger generation of fans (and let's not forget about the negative exposure the scene got with people getting caught for sleeping with underage girls and so on).

I'm not really following them closely and have like 0 interest in their recent career, but from what I recall through the years here's my point of view. When Misaruka came out as a kotekote band almost ten years ago, I actually thought that through the years they could become a solid band at least for the kote lovers indepent scene. They were nothing special, but they came out at a time there was like nobody prominent for that genre and they had somehow decent vocals which made it more interesting imo. Then KISAKI stole their guitarist and the other one left too. When they came back a year later with new members they started morphing into a budget clone of Versailles. Maybe at that time they felt Versailles kei could be the new trend? I mostly think it's due to Rin liking Versailles/Hizaki a bit too much. Just Misaruka's musicianship (and production/engineers etc) is as good as it takes to be a decent Versailles copycat band. I think Versailles had the same problem after a few years, but being tied to those aesthetics and sound makes it pretty hard to find something refreshing and new to do, both in terms of costumes and new songs. And in Misaruka's case, their limited skills doesn't really help I guess. I never thought Rin was bad, but I recall sawah's guitar work being total garbage and the rest of the other members not really shining as musicians or stage personas either. They are not even that young to be able to improve that much through the years either (some members are already around or over 40). Adding their crazy release schedule and intense activity to the plate just made it worse. It's good the label is pushing a lot on them but I don't think they have been able to handle it. Also Kiwamu made a few band choices too: shooing one decent music video instead of 200 shitty ones would have probably benefited their image, and turning down stupid MALICE MIZER cover requests and trimming their sound a bit would have helped definately Also if you are trying to be a Versailles clone maybe spending more money on costumes? I am sure they are not disbanding and just trying to get more attention, but switching to a genre that is a bit more comfortable for their skills/budget and slow down a bit would have been the right choice to me. Looks like rui is a fairly popular singer on niconico covering anime songs or something like that: maybe that might be something to focus on more.

Ex-LAREINE members MAYU and EMIRU are collaborating with Azusa Kobayashi on her new mini-album "Blue". MAYU composed and plays guitar on all songs. EMIRU plays bass and also works as recording engineer, manipulator and arranger. The album also features covers of LAREINE's "Darkness" and "Sakura" (both music and lyrics by MAYU). It looks like EMIRU is closely working with MAYU on his new recording studio METAMORPHOSE. MAYU will also play guitar on Azusa's oneman live on January 29th as a guest. The album will be sold in advance there. 3rd Mini Album「Blue ～光と闇の中で～ (Blue ~hikari to yami no naka de~」 Release date: 2017/2/14 Price: 2,000 yen Tracklist: 1.Blue 2.Jealousy 3.Darkness *LAREINE cover 4.月が照らす欠片 (Tsuki ga terasu kakera) 5.藍のワルツ (Ai no waltz) 6.さくら (sakura) *LAREINE cover Btw while being an (almost 40 year old) idol, Azusa usually collaborates with visual kei artists. Her backing band included Naoki (Kaggra), Kyoki (Secilia Luna), Setsuna (Metis Gretel), Mataro (from kozi's solo band) and others. More info about the release is on her blog: http://ameblo.jp/kobayashi-azusa/entry-12234614680.html

For this live it's pair ticket system (if you have a ticket a second person can come in for free) so it's actually 150 tickets sold (laughs).

kore/kono: this sore, are/sono: that dore/dono: which koko: here soko/asoko: there doko: where Basically the "so" (sore, sono, soko) ones refer to something/somewhere that is close to the person you are talking to but distant from yourself, while the "a" ones (are, ano, asoko) refers to something/somewhere that is distant from the people conversating (if it's close to both you would just use kore/kono/koko). The difference between kore and kono (and so on) is that kono requires the noun right after it (such as "this pen", "kono pen"), while with kore you do not need to specity ("kore"="this one", are="that one", etc.). If you are talking about something/somewhere that is not physically there, you should say "sore, sono, soko" for something only one person knows, while "are, ano, asoko" for something that both people in the conversation are familiar with. For example, if you are talking with your girlfriend about a friend of yours, you would say "sono hito" (that person) to talk about somebody your girlfriend never met/never heard of, or "ano hito" (that person) if she already knows him. Not sure I was clear!!

Really? I actually think they get to play at large venues and keep releasing music steadily only thanks to Starwave and Kiwamu spending most label money on them. If they were just a regular self-produced band, they would have probably already disbanded by now or have little fans like Ao and other Versailles low-budget versions. As we're going off topic, La'veil's new song is a reworked version of one of Yuna's previous band songs it seems (he was on vocals back then).

Starwave also does booking and holds several events per month and bands who are not in the label are playing every time. Playing at their events does not imply they have a relationship with the label/will join it.

Was it? I thought one of the reasons they went on hiatus 4 years ago was the fact they were kind of going downhill. Their last live at NHK Hall did not sell as well as expected and it had only 3500 seats. During their indies era they were playing at Shibuko (about 2000) so I don't see a huge difference. They kept doing most of their tour finals there after going major too. If I remember right the live house shows in that tour sold out, but those were really small venues for a major artist so.. For Ascendead Master and Jubilee Warner really worked on promotion and had them go on TV and radios, they even got the AD truck driving through Tokyo like popular artists, but nothing like that happened afterwards (maybe it did not pay off?). They still have a name and are fairly popular in the vk scene but maybe not so good for a major artist? I know the Japanese situation for bands is really bad nowadays, but their individual projects play at the same venues as indie bands and still cannot get to sell out. It's like they show themselves as a legendary band and book big venues to show off but are still getting lukewarm response. Maybe it's been felt differently overseas as their world tours are kind of successful, but that's pretty much about it.

Being desperate about selling Budoukan tickets? Their revival concert hall has a capacity of about 2000 people and did not sell out, while Budoukan holds over 14000 people. So I guess they are doing all they can to attract people to this concert so that they can hope to get the "successfully played at Budoukan" achievement. But Versailles never had a rare song. Everything always got released for everybody sooner or later so I wouldn't expect this to be the only chance to get the CD. It will probably be reissued later next year or all songs might end up in their next full album. Another option is that the Budoukan version of the CD will have different package / be just a promotional copy of the real thing. Edit: anyway original album = all new songs. The official statement was pretty clear about it being a new thing.

Mercuro will release a new mini-album "血祭" in 2016 (details to be announced). Mini-album lineup: Vocals: Rare レア (Jigokue) Guitar: Hiroshi 博士 (Mercuro original member) Guitar: Yukirou：博士 (Mercuro original member) Bass: Inori 祈 (glamscure, Silence) Drums: Jun 純 (Kalavinka, glamscure support)

Samples from the 1st mini album can be listened below. Support Members: Guitar: Takumi Coma (dummy-xD, ex-Moran Velo) Bass: Ivy (ex-Moran) Drums: Keito Ookuma (ex-REDMAN) https://www.youtube.com/embed/Xm6-gF2gkoo

Band 黒鏡の教会 (Church of Black Mirror) resumed activities in 2016. They just released a digital single "Lobelia -綺麗な嘘と穢れた真実-" (Kireina uso to kegareta shinjitsu). The profits will be sent to Save the Children to help the victims of the Kumamoto earthquake. It seems there will also be a CD version. According to their biography, the band was formed in 2000 but their activities were cancelled after three months. Vocals: Kei (ex-Eliphas Levi) Guitar: Hiroshi (Mercuro) Bass: Shinya (Mercuro support) Details: http://mercuro.jp/

I believe Kyouka is singing the latter half?

[Kaya Setlist] 1. Parfana 2. Masquerade with jazz band: 3. TATTOO (Akina Nakamori) 4. Manatsu no yo no yume 真夏の夜の夢 (Yumi Matsutoya) 5. Shoujo A 少女A (Akina Nakamori) [KAMIJO with jazz band setlist] 1. Moulin Rouge 2. Fuyu Toukyou 冬東京 (LAREINE) [Versailles (薔薇の末裔) Setlist] SE. DESCENDANT OF THE ROSE 1. The Red Carpet Day 2. zombie 3. Aristocrat's Symphony [Princess & Queen Setlist] vocals: Kaya guitar: HIZAKI bass: EMIRU drums MACHI SE. Ainsi Soit Je… (Mylène Farmer) 1. au revoir (MALICE MIZER) 2. fiançailles (LAREINE) 3. Shout & Bites (Versailles) [LAREINE (Fleur) Setlist] SE 1. emeraude〜海に魅せられて〜 2. Fleur 3. Saikai no hana 再会の花 [KAMIJO & Be Choir Setlist] SE.Vive le roi 1.第一楽章「Presto」 2.第二楽章「Sacrifice of Allegro」 3.第三楽章「Royal Tercet」 4.第四楽章「Dying-Table」 5.第五楽章「Sonata」 6.第六楽章「Mangetsu no Adagio 満月のアダージョ」 7.第七楽章「Throne」

Might be the lyrics of the new song they played.

Isn't that Saki (ex-Cuartet)?

Fool's Mate stopped in December 12th with issue n.376. http://www.fools-mate.co.jp/pc/info_main.html The letter says the reason is because the business has changed since its first publications in '77 and it's been hard to make a profit. They were also looking for people who could think about a new way to do successful music-related media, and they now have a channel on niconico though. http://ch.nicovideo.jp/fools-mate

had a look at the pictures on their official twitter and members just look like Sear/Lene maybe Sear/Lene with new drummer? their last live was at a starwave gig so it might be related